We’ve had funner weekends. Fish is safe, and in Megan’s doghouse, after romping around the neighborhood all night Friday and Saturday nights. Sunday morning Megan spotted telltale Fish vomit on the front porch, and within minutes he was in her angry arms.
He has been self-righteously aloof ever since. He learned nothing.
Friday was an ugly day. More on that later. But for now, you’ll note this blog is a mess, as is Megan’s blog, as is my work blog.
They’ve all been screwed up since Friday, when a bill came due for the hosting and domain-name registration, and the debit card on file was the one $#@!%* Sterling Savings Banks had thoughtfully cancelled last month because of all those mysterious transactions all over the planet in recent weeks. I got the new billing info to Verio on Friday for the site hosting, things were back to normal briefly, then on Saturday I discovered the domain-name registration had lapsed. Verio handles both, but apparently their two billing departments don’t share info or something.
So now I’ve been assured this morning that things will be back to normal in 24-48 hours. Meanwhile … enjoy your summer!
I went over to Beacon Hill and snapped a few pictures at sunset this evening …
We drove up to the Paradise area in Mount Rainier National Park yesterday. There are lots of paved trails through the alpine meadows where flowers bloom briefly in late July and August, but right now there’s still quite a bit of snow on the ground and the flowers are just starting to hint at what’s coming.
It was a mob scene anyway, with big crowds of tourists (mostly Indian families) checking out the areas closest to the visitor center. Walking a mile uphill seemed to fix that, though, and we had a bit of solitude in places, including Alta Vista peak to ourselves.
Not to leap to conclusions, but I’m guessing that deer has been fed by tourists.
The pictures start here.
We came home today to find the neighbors doing some remodeling. I guess this explains why they stopped mowing the lawn this spring.
ADDED SUNDAY: the house came down slowly over the last few days. Friday it was half gone, and Saturday they finished it off. A little sweeping up, and they’ll be ready to build a new one.
After an early morning 4th-of-July bike ride (nice to get some exercise for a change!), I decided to update the sidebar of my blog. It’s been a mess ever since that strange experience in Nairobi where the hotel’s proxy server wouldn’t let me see my own posts, and I replaced the sidebar with some safari photos thinking that was the only way to share them.
Now, I know the officially sanctioned thing all of us monochromatic little bloggers are supposed to do with a sidebar: put links to other blogs, then they’ll put links to your blog, and we’ll all “drive traffic” and enjoy “network effects” and, hey, you make a salad and I’ll bring the hot dogs and we’ll have a party!
Yeah, right. I’ll be updating the sidebar of the work blog in the next few days and will probably follow protocol over there, but this blog is just an offshoot of Mahugh.com, and the mission statement for Mahugh.com hasn’t changed since 1996: to give Mom a place to keep track of what I’m up to.
She doesn’t need links to do that. Hell, she’d get lost if she had them. The first time I linked to a YouTube video, Mom was barely talking to me the next time I saw her. When I managed to get her to tell me what was wrong, it turned out she had clicked around YouTube a bit and found some girl shaking her bare butt and talking dirty. She was so disappointed that I had stuff like that on “my” site. (Megan and I did quite a bit of research, but we never did find the offending video.)
Given my targeted mission statement as mentioned above, links to external content are risky and can do more harm than good. So I’ve eliminated the concept altogether. If you don’t know how to get to Megan’s blog, you’ll never find out by hanging around here. (Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll link to Megan when there’s something there you should see, and the rest of the time you should probably avoid that place anyway.) ***
Instead, I’ve filled the sidebar with links to some favorite photos I’ve posted on the blog. Not to feed my own ego, of course. Oh no, that guy is plenty fat and happy already, believe me. These links are for Mom, so that she can enjoy my good taste and sharp eye whenever she’d like, even if my latest post is as lame as this one. Enjoy, Mom.
ADDED LATER:
*** Hmm, that was so funny when I wrote it. But based on early feedback from a major market segment, I have made a slight adjustment to my policy. There shall be one link on the sidebar, on the home page, post page, comments page, and every page everywhere on the blog. Sorry about that, Dear, I was just having a little fun!
I decided to skip out early today and join Megan on the deck for 4th of July Eve. And a lovely evening it is.
Here’s the view at 5:00PM, when I’d normally be settling in for some uninterrupted hours after everyone leaves building 18, or catching a taxi from a workshop back to a hotel, or sitting on a plane to somewhere …
I’m on the deck, posting this on my laptop, while trying to convince Megan to order dinner from the place she orders from when I’m out of town. But she keeps arguing for something better. I must be using the wrong approach; she just said, between peals of laughter, “you are such a whiner!” I’ll try a different tact.
Happy Fourth of July Eve!
Two more photos added later …
Doug's work blog
